Powder free gloves have been produced by using powder free coating technology in combination with chlorination or other post treatment processes. Some of these coated gloves use a manufacturing process which requires that the substrate be treated with acid or other harsh chemicals to improve adhesion of the coating to the base rubber glove. This additional chemical processing step is not preferable in glove manufacturing because the chemicals used are generally corrosive and/or difficult to handle in large scale production processes. Additionally, most of the coated and non-coated gloves do not have acceptable donning characteristics with respect to damp and wet skin, which is one of the critical product requirements for surgical glove applications. Furthermore, in the case of laminated rubber gloves, the laminates or coatings can easily crack and expose the wearer to the base natural rubber polymer used to construct the glove. Finally, some of these gloves also exhibit self-sticking between the inner glove surfaces which create difficulties for health care workers trying to don the gloves in a sterile environment.
The majority of commercially available powder-free latex gloves are manufactured by first preparing a powdered glove on-line and then removing the powder from the glove by chlorination and rinsing off-line. The chlorination process oxidizes the surface of the glove thereby providing improved dry donning characteristics. Chlorination also removes any powder deposited on the gloves during the rinsing operation. The chlorination process is generally rapid, which in turn leads to a problem in consistency during the processing step. Variation in processing between batches, between gloves in the same batch, and even between areas on the same glove can lead to differences in surface tack. For example, a single glove may have areas of reduced tack adjacent to areas of increased tack. Conventionally, surface tack describes the adherence of an article to itself or an identical article, whereas stickiness is used to describe the adherence of an article to other materials.
Accordingly, there exists a need for improved manufacturing processes for making powder-free elastomeric articles with consistency in surface tack between areas within a single article, between articles processed together, and between articles processed in separate batches.